Former Argentine military leader Jorge Rafael Videla has died aged 87 while serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity.

He is reported to have died from natural causes in prison.

The general was jailed in 2010 for the deaths of 31 dissidents during the 1976-83 military dictatorship, of which he was overall leader until 1981.

Up to 30,000 people were tortured and killed during this period, in a campaign known as the "Dirty War".

[...]

In 1976, he and two other military leaders staged a coup against President Isabel Peron, the widow of former leader Juan Domingo Peron.

Quite frankly, he was where he deserved to be, even if it took a while to get him there:

Gen Videla had been sentenced to life in prison for torture, murder and other crimes in 1985, but was pardoned in 1990 under an amnesty given by the president at the time, Carlos Menem.

In April 2010, the Supreme Court upheld a 2007 federal court move to overturn his pardon.

Eight months later he was found "criminally responsible" for the torture and deaths of 31 prisoners and jailed for life.

[...]

Last year, he was also convicted of overseeing the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners.

At least 400 babies are thought to have been taken from their parents while they were held in detention centres.

More than 100 children given for adoption to military or police couples have since been reunited with their biological families.

"Plan B" only has about 400 members but its leader, Alekos Alavanos, believes it can offer a new way out for Greece.

Mr Alavanos has told the BBC he wants a moratorium on the country’s debt repayment, an orderly exit from the Euro and nationalisation of the banks.

Of course, the part is hardly likely to be of any significance.

Despite the deeply unpopular spending cuts that Greece has been forced to take to qualify for an EU bail-out, more than 60% of Greeks still back membership of the single currency…

The story struck me as interesting if only because there is a great deal of political dissatisfaction in Greece at the moment (not that that is a surprise).   The truly problematic party is Golden Dawn, to wit (via Euronews):   Golden Dawn and Syriza clash over ‘Heil Hitler’ cries in Greek parliament

The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party is at the centre of another political row in Greece after one of its MPs was expelled from parliament amid cries of “Heil Hitler”.

The sitting president had already warned Panayiotis Iliopoulos for repeatedly violating parliamentary rules by insulting fellow deputies.

After he had called them “goats”, “scoundrels” and “wretched people”, security guards were called to lead him away.

The phrase “Heil Hitler ” was clearly heard three times – although who shouted it is in dispute. Golden Dawn claims the cries came from left-wing deputies from the opposition Syriza party.

Golden Dawn has 18 seats out of the 300 in the Greek parliament.

The law provides for the spouses in same-sex marriage to adopt the biological child of their spouse:

Portuguese parliament has approved Friday a bill that will allow same-sex married couples to adopt their partner’s bilological or adopted children. The bill was approved with 99 votes in favor, 94 votes against, and 9 abstentions.

The bill was supported by the ruling center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the progressive Socialist Party (PS).

However, a bill allowing a married same-sex couple to adopt as a couple was rejected by parliament. ABC News has the numbers:

another proposal by the Left Bloc and Green Party that would have let gay partners adopt children together as a married couple was defeated, with 104 votes against, 77 in favor and 21 abstentions.

France’s president has signed into law a controversial bill making the country the ninth in Europe, and 14th globally, to legalise gay marriage.

On Friday, the Constitutional Council rejected a challenge by the right-wing opposition, clearing the way for Francois Hollande to sign the bill.

According to the piece, the first wedding can take place 10 days after the signing.

The bill also deals with adoption by same-sex couples:

[The Constitutional Court] said the interest of the child would be paramount in adoption cases, cautioning that legalising same-sex adoption would not automatically mean the "right to a child".

[...]

Opinion polls have suggested that around 55-60% of French people support gay marriage, but only about 50% approve of gay adoption.

As side commentary in the piece notes some interesting political dynamics:

Opponents are angry and frustrated. They think President Hollande has made gay marriage a personal obsession, because he’s failed to make progress on other more pressing issues – like the economy.

Here’s a map of legalized same-sex marriage:

Setting aside one’s views on unionization, I would note that basic fact of large numbers of part time faculty is a real issue and underscores that the increases in tuition that we have been seeing in higher education is not flowing into the pockets of the faculty.

The piece cites a Chronicle of Higher Education piece that notes that 70% of college faculty are non-tenure track.  While there is no breakdown of part-time v. full-time in the story, the bottom line is that non-tenure track faculty are cheaper than tenure-track faculty.  The trend has been to shift more and more in this direction and a major reason is cost.  According to the Chronicle, the breakdown at 2-year v. 4-year schools is as follows:

Community colleges have traditionally relied heavily on nontenure-track faculty, with 85 percent of their instructors in 2010 not eligible for tenure, according to the most recent federal data available. But the trend has been increasingly evident at four-year institutions, where nearly 64 percent of the instructional faculty isn’t eligible for tenure.

Yes, school have been building nicer dorms and dining facilities and investing in technology and so forth on their campuses as a means of recruitment, and this drives up costs.  However, a major driver of tuition increases has been the fact that public schools have been losing state funds for years.   When those funds go away, they have to be replaced somewhere.  One way, as noted above, is more part-time and non-tenure track faculty (i.e., by cutting labor costs).  Another way is to simply raise tuition (which is really the main way to address the problem).

To put some numbers on just recent cuts, see the following from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

States are spending $2,353 or 28 percent less per student on higher education, nationwide, in the current 2013 fiscal year than they did in 2008, when the recession hit.

[...]

Deep state funding cuts have major implications for public colleges and universities.  States (and to a lesser extent localities) provide 53 percent of the revenue that can be used to support instruction at these schools.  When this funding is cut, colleges and universities generally must either cut spending, raise tuition to cover the gap, or both.

Also, as states cut, tuition goes up:

Here’s the long-term trend in tuition’s role in funding higher education:

Whether it is state funding for state schools, cutting Pell Grants, or high interest rates on student loans, we have to come to grips with the very real difficulties that many students have in paying for college and as well as deciding what it really means that we have “public” colleges and universities.  Note:  many “public” schools receive less than 20% of their budgets from the states in which they reside.  As one column on this subject notes, this raises long-term questions about not just student costs, but governance of these institutions:

The longer-term issues that are being addressed in some states and at some public institutions. If these public institutions are no longer state supported who owns them? Who should govern them? Who should they serve? Should states be contracting for quite specified outcomes? The defunding of public higher education by the states inevitably inaugurates a new conversation about who controls them and whose interests are to be served. The states will play a diminished role in finding answers to these questions if public higher education is to survive and thrive.

I am not asking anyone to cry a river over the plight of faculty or university administrators.  I am not saying that every dollar spent at every institution is spent wisely.  I am saying, however, that if we think that part of the purpose of higher education is to function as a gateway for young people to pass into a better life, we need to reevaluate how we pay for it.  We are, as James’ post notes, in a situation where the current funding structure is more likely to replicate existing economic divisions rather than allowing for the capable to gain what they need to improve their standing.  Even beyond the question of whether higher education can be a mechanism for upper mobility, we need to be concerned as to whether it is sufficiently affordable for individuals to remain at the same level as the families from which they come.

The whole idea of public higher education is to subsidize the ability of young people to obtain a degree.  If we cannot, or will not, pay enough to make that affordable, we might as well stop the fiction of “public” higher ed and just let only those who can afford it go to school (with the commensurate results).  Creating a huge class of people with massive student loans is not a sustainable model.

More reading:

• Inside Higher Ed:  State Support Slumps Again.
• American Council on Education:  State Funding: A Race to the Bottom

To start with the basics:  any suggestion of the IRS behaving in a political manner or of the DOJ targeting journalist is disturbing.  The IRS should never be used as a tool to target political groups because of their views and the Department of Justice should investigate the press only for very significant reasons in the most limited way.  These basics hit on the very heart of democratic governance, because both issues hit rather directly on issues of First Amendment liberties including speech, press, petition of government, and assembly.  This makes these stories quite important.

Here are some initial thoughts.

On the AP story:

1.  The scant amount of information that we currently have suggests that this is a legacy of policies and behaviors established after 9/11, i.e., that if “terrorism” is involved, then the government get very aggressive about investigating.  I didn’t like that attitude then, and I don’t like it now.

2.  The fact that the media was targeted will mean enhanced interest on this story.

3.  I have to wonder if this won’t bring down AG Holder (not very insightful, I know).

On the IRS story:

1.  If the President directed the IRS to investigate Tea Party organizations as a means to attack his political opponents, then sign me up for impeachment.  If the origins of the actions were those of specific IRS employees, then this behavior needs to be corrected, but it is therefore a very different story.

2.  There is a legitimate interest in making sure that organizations claiming tax exempt status are eligible for that status.  However, such inquiries need to be politically neutral.

3.  A major culprit here is, ultimately, the complex nature of our tax code (and campaign finance system).  As Jeffery Toobin explains:

It’s important to review why the Tea Party groups were petitioning the I.R.S. anyway. They were seeking approval to operate under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. This would require them to be “social welfare,” not political, operations. There are significant advantages to being a 501(c)(4). These groups don’t pay taxes; they don’t have to disclose their donors—unlike traditional political organizations, such as political-action committees. In return for the tax advantage and the secrecy, the 501(c)(4) organizations must refrain from traditional partisan political activity, like endorsing candidates.

If that definition sounds murky—that is, if it’s unclear what 501(c)(4) organizations are allowed to do—that’s because it is murky. Particularly leading up to the 2012 elections, many conservative organizations, nominally 501(c)(4)s, were all but explicitly political in their work. For example, Americans for Prosperity, which was funded in part by the Koch Brothers, was an instrumental force in helping the Republicans hold the House of Representatives. In every meaningful sense, groups like Americans for Prosperity were operating as units of the Republican Party. Democrats organized similar operations, but on a much smaller scale. (They undoubtedly would have done more, but they lacked the Republican base for funding such efforts.)

So the scandal—the real scandal—is that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in political activity in such a sustained and open way. As Fred Wertheimer, the President of Democracy 21, a government-ethics watchdog group, put it, “it is clear that a number of groups have improperly claimed tax-exempt status as section 501(c)(4) ‘social welfare’ organizations in order to hide the donors who financed their campaign activities in the 2010 and 2012 federal elections.”

The entire system is one that creates a rather convoluted situation (and one that makes oversight difficult).  That being said, I will again stress that such oversight needs to be assiduously nonpolitical in nature.  Indeed, the real story here may well be the whole question of when a group should be considered “explicitly political” or not.  As such, it could ultimately be a campaign finance story more than anything else.

4.  The fact that this happened at more than one place in the IRS is problematic for the administration:  IRS officials in Washington were involved in targeting of conservative groups.

5.  I will say that on one level there could be a legitimate issue here (going back to point #3) that if there was a disproportionate number of groups of a particular point of view seeking tax exempt status during this period of time, that might account for the disproportionate level of scrutiny.   Of course, that won’t matter from a purely public relations/political point of view.

"It’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces.”

Personally, I have been thinking “action movie impression” but “cartoonish” works as well.

First, the basic context:

Speaking to an investors conference early this month, historian Niall Ferguson was asked what John Maynard Keynes meant by his famous statement that “in the long run, we are all dead.” In an ad lib response, Ferguson suggested that Keynes’s philosophy reflected the fact that the “effete” economist was gay and childless, and therefore did not care much about the fate of future generations.

Second, the quote in question:

The passage under debate — which comes from Keynes’s 1923 book, “A Tract on Monetary Reform” — discusses what is known in economics as the quantity theory of money: the notion that a change in a nation’s money supply causes a proportionate change in prices. Keynes, whose book “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” a searing attack on the Treaty of Versailles, had already made him famous, pointed out that “in the long run,” this relationship was “probably true.” But, he went on, “this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.”

Third, the issue at hand:

Keynes’s focus on the short run was grounded in the philosophical principle of “insufficient reason.” If individuals have no sufficient reason to believe that a good situation today will have adverse long-term consequences, it must always be rational for them to aim to maximize their short-term good.

What is striking about this is that is generally considered a conservative principle that policies always have unintended consequences and that human reason cannot fully anticipate what comes in the future. Indeed, Skidelsky continues the above passage with a linkage to an essay Keynes wrote on Edmund Burke, the noted conservative thinker:

In an essay on the conservative philosopher Edmund Burke, Keynes translated this moral principle of individual behavior into the political principle of prudence:

“Burke ever held, and held rightly, that it can seldom be right . . . to sacrifice a present benefit for a doubtful advantage in the future. . . . It is therefore the happiness of our own contemporaries that is our main concern; we should be very chary of sacrificing large numbers of people for the sake of a contingent end, however advantageous that may appear. . . . We can never know enough to make the chance worth taking. . . . There is this further consideration . . . it is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transition.”

This leads to the money graf:

This is the bedrock of Keynesian economics. So Ferguson was quite right to say that Keynes discounted the future — but it was not because of homosexuality, it was because of uncertainty. Keynes would have rejected the claim of today’s austerity champions that short-term pain, in the form of budget cuts, is the price we need to pay for long-term economic growth. The pain is real, he would say, while the benefit is conjecture.

Regardless of one’s views on Keynesian policy recommendations, it is difficult to think the above through and say that it is lacks intellectual foundation or, worse, to attribute it to some notion that Keynes’ lack of progeny was its source.

And for what it is worth, Skidelsky concludes with some partial criticism of Keynes:

Personally, I think Keynes’s view of the future as radically uncertain is too sweeping. Although it is impossible to assign reliable statistical probabilities to specific events — Will North Korea launch a nuclear strike in the next five years? What will be the price of oil in 10 years? — we do have some experience of the likely long-term consequences of bad behavior, and it would be foolish to ignore it. The future is not a random bet.

But in many matters, politicians would be well advised to follow Keynes’s advice and prefer the present generation to future ones. There is only so much pain voters will tolerate. And there is insufficient reason to believe that today’s austerity will bring tomorrow’s prosperity.

That last point is what the debate ought to be about.  Too many pretend that pain now equals gain later,when we, in fact, lack evidence to prove that assertion.

A parting note, the phrase “In the long run, we’re all dead” makes for a great line in a rap battle:

The era of illegal homebrewing has come to an end! Alabama, the final remaining state to still outlaw the making of beer at home, officially legalized homebrewing with the passage of bill HB9 which was signed by Governor Robert Bentley on Thursday, May 9, 2013.

The Alabama law goes into effect immediately, making Alabama the forty-ninth state to allow homebrewing, despite being the fiftieth state to pass a homebrew bill. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed a homebrew legalization bill on March 19, 2013, but the law will not officially go into effect until July 1, 2013, making the Magnolia State the last state to legalize homebrewing.

As is often the case, we in Alabama are grateful to Mississippi for making us look marginally better by comparison.

(And no, I am not a homebrewer, but it has long struck me as ridiculous that it was illegal in this state).

Via CNN:  Dow closes above 15,000.

Here’s the DJIA over the last five years:

Whatever one might wish to say, the investor class is doing quite well (even with the dreaded PPACA destroying the economy, not to mention an increase in top marginal tax rates).

North Korea has removed two medium-range missiles from a coastal launch site, indicating a lowering of tension on the peninsula, a US official said.

Pyongyang was believed to be preparing for a launch last month, having threatened attacks in the region.

[...]

The Musudan missiles had been ready to launch at any moment but North Korea had now "moved them", a unnamed US defence official told AFP news agency.

A report from South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing an unnamed senior government source, backed that up, saying Pyongyang appeared to have lifted its highest combat alert and moved the missiles, although their current location was not confirmed.

The move is the most tangible sign yet that North Korea has stepped back from its threats to launch missiles, the BBC’s Jane Little in Washington reports.

So, shockingly, it would appear that the behavior we witnesses from the North was not the beginning of a new war on the peninsula, but rather more sabre-rattling by the North, probably more for domestic consumption than anything else.

Of course, military leaders sounds cautious notes, as we would expect:

But a senior US official from the National Security Council warned that, given the North’s unpredictable behaviour, it was "premature to celebrate it as good news".

Pentagon spokesman George Little, who declined to comment directly on the missiles’ reported removal, told reporters "what we have seen recently is a provocation pause".

Although, really, isn’t there an ongoing cycle of provocation and the pausing thereof?

“I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term. I know that puts me on a limb,” the former Arkansas governor said on “The Mike Huckabee Show.” “But this is not minor. It wasn’t minor when Richard Nixon lied to the American people and worked with those in his administration to cover-up what really happened in Watergate. But, I remind you — as bad as Watergate was, because it broke the trust between the president and the people, no one died. This is more serious because four Americans did in fact die.”

First, he is not out on a limb insofar as he is telling his audience what they want to here.

Second, this is not a new formulation (i.e, people died, hence it is worse than Watergate).  However, the unfortunate fact is that a lot of American have died due to the failure of the government to prevent it for whatever reason (see:  9/11) or have died because of poor policy choices in the context of dubious public claims by presidents (see:   Viet Nam and Iraq).  Beyond that, I do not have time to list all of the cases of Americans, diplomats included, who have died during given presidential terms.

Really, the deployment of “Watergate” in a political conversation is done for the same reason people use “fascist” or “Nazi”:  it is synonymous with “bad” even if the user of the word uses it imprecisely and if the listener really doesn’t know a full definition of the term in question.  Most people almost certainly do not know the details of the Watergate scandal, but they know that a) it is considered the worse political scandal of all time (at least that anyone can remember), and b) it eventually let to Richard “Tricky Dick” NIxon’s,  he of “I am not a crook” fame, resignation.   What more do you need to know?

And if Banghazi is worse than all that, well it must  be pretty horrible, yes?

But, does Huckabee actually believe all this?  Probably not, but it makes for a nice political issue for 2014:

Huckabee, however, said his predication about Obama “will not happen” if the Democrats seize control of the House and retain control of the Senate next year.

“If they’re able to get control of the House and maintain the Senate, this will not happen because they won’t let it happen,” Huckabee said.

“And they won’t let it happen not because they’re protecting just the president, they’re trying to protect their entire political party. If they try to protect the president and their party, and do so at the expense of the truth, their president and their party will go down. Now, here’s what I’m going to suggest will happen — as the information and facts begin to come out, it will become so obvious that there was a concerted and very, very deliberate attempt to mislead this country and its people to lie to Congress, as well as to you.”

In other words:  in case Republicans voters need a reason to be motivated to vote in the mid-terms, here it is.

Just in terms of rational discourse, the following is maddening:

“When a president lies to the American people and is part of a cover-up, he cannot continue to govern,” Huckabee said. “And as the facts come out, I think we’re going to see something startling. And before it’s over, I don’t think this president will finish his term unless somehow they can delay it in Congress past the next three and a half years.”

Here’s the maddening part:  it asserts that a) the truth is not out, but b) that the speaker somehow has special knowledge about said truth.  However, there is a) no evidence that the truth is not out, and b) the speaker is just making unsubstantiated claims.  If the speaker, in fact, has access to unrevealed truth that would support the assertions in question, then the speaker should provide said evidence.  And yet, there is no evidence, there is just assertion.

Beyond that:  I have never had any one provide a clear explanation of what the precise lies are supposed to have been in regards to these events.  It just seems to me that if one is going to claims that there are “lies” and a “cover-up” (especially one of such gravity that it can bring down a president) that one ought to have some idea as to have was lied about and what was covered up.

And yes, I know that there is new testimony in the news from Gregory Hicks (as Doug Mataconis has already noted) that is going to bring the story back to the forefront (CBS:  Diplomat: U.S. Special Forces told “you can’t go” to Benghazi during attacks):

According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

[...]

Hicks told congressional investigators that if the U.S. had quickly sent a military aircraft over Benghazi, it might have saved American lives. The U.S. Souda Bay Naval Base is an hour’s flight from Libya.

“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them,” Hicks testified.

Now, would I like to hear more about the assertion concerning Gibson?  Sure.  Does this sound like the kind of thing that brings down a President?  Not so much.  I am not even sure we have anything that resembles a scandal here.

In regards to the aircraft issue:  that is just Hicks’ opinion and nothing more.  It may well be true, but it is hardly the basis of a scandal.

Also, Jonathan Bernstein makes an excellent point (The real Benghazi story: The dogs that aren’t barking):

What’s a shame is that while there may not be any real massive conspiracies and cover-ups, there very well may be real instances of administration errors and worse throughout the government. There always are! But uncovering them requires hard work, and might only turn up low-level malfeasance in agencies that most Fox News viewers have never heard of and don’t care about. So House Republicans, who have the position to investigate real wrongdoing, don’t bother. Finding out that some low-level appointee did something real but relatively minor might result in better government, but it’s not guaranteed to get mentioned by all the conservative talk radio hosts. So: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, and never mind whether the government is actually functioning properly or not.

Indeed.  I would be quite supportive of a Congress that actually took its oversight responsibilities seriously.

Police in the north of Colombia on Monday arrested an escaped prisoner who apparently tried to avoid capture by dressing as a woman and even getting breast implants.

After escaping from prison where he had been sentenced to serve 60 years, Giovanni Rebolledo reportedly decided to get breast implants to help him avoid capture.

Despite his rather impressive new rack, Police recaptured Rebolledo during a routine stop and search in the Viejo Prado district of the northern coastal city of Barranquilla.

That last sentence is one I can safely say I have never read before.

More images at El Tiempo: Rosalinda, el hombre que se volvió travesti para huir de la justicia

Prof Ferguson has now apologised “unreservedly” for what he called “stupid” and “insensitive” remarks.

He was asked to comment on Mr Keynes’s famous observation of “in the long run we are all dead”.

In unscripted remarks during a question and answer session, the high-profile historian and writer said Mr Keynes was indifferent to the long run because he had no children, and that he had no children because he was gay.

[...]

“My disagreements with Keynes’s economic philosophy have never had anything to do with his sexual orientation,” he wrote.

“It is simply false to suggest, as I did, that his approach to economic policy was inspired by any aspect of his personal life. As those who know me and my work are well aware, I detest all prejudice, sexual or otherwise.”

Also of significance (as a commenter in the earlier thread also noted):

In 1926, Mr Keynes married Lydia Lopokova, a Russian ballerina, and Prof Ferguson also said he had forgotten that she had miscarried.

See my earlier post on the subject here.

During its run last fall, “The Walking Dead” was the highest-rated show among viewers 18 to 49, the most-sought age group, with a bigger audience than network winners like “The Big Bang Theory,” “American Idol,” “The Voice” and “Modern Family.”

Now the zombies are back for the second half of the show’s third season, and they continue to gnaw on everything in their path, including the broadcast networks’ historical claim to being the only place to find a mass audience. Three weeks ago, the zombies owned Sunday night, attracting 7.7 million viewers in the 18 to 49 range, more than any broadcast show in the land.

It gets better (or worse, if you are a network). AMC has a spinoff chat show about zombies called “The Talking Dead,” and even that is making waves. That same Sunday three weeks ago, “The Talking Dead” drew almost 2.8 million viewers ages 18 to 49, trumping NBC not just for the night, but for all of February.

Emphasis mine.

In regards to the role of Netflix:

AMC, along with its studio partners, has always made sure that if someone wants to catch up with America’s favorite zombies, or “Breaking Bad” or “Mad Men,” two of its other hits, then past seasons are readily available — on demand, on Netflix or on iTunes. As a result, the audience for “The Walking Dead” is up 51 percent overall last year, and it is one of the most consistently talked about shows on social media.

This is exactly how I got into both The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad and have recently watched the first few episode of Mad Men.  Heck, I was so invested in Breaking Bad that I bought the first half of season 5 on iTunes (and I don’t purchase a lot of TV episodes).  If I lacked this method of getting into these shows, I would never have become a viewer.

See, also, Erik Kain at Forbes:  How Technology Is Making ‘The Walking Dead’ Television’s Most Popular Show.